


I Showed You My Dick Please Respond

by micdropbam



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Alpha Mary Jane Watson, Alpha Miles Morales, Alpha Wade Wilson, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst with a Happy Ending, Boypussy, Breeding, Crack Treated Seriously, Everyone Loves Peter Parker, F/M, Farce, Fluff, Infertility, Intersex Male Omegas, Knotting, M/M, Mpreg, Multi, Omega Peter Parker, Pack, Pack Building, Peter Parker is a Mess, Polyamorous Pack, Polyamory, Sexting, The Author Regrets Everything, Time Travel, accidental texts, love square
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:54:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26660245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/micdropbam/pseuds/micdropbam
Summary: Peter B. Parker returned to universe 616 from the collider incident with hope in his heart like he hadn't felt  in years. He was gonna win MJ back, and do whatever it takes to prove that he's ready to be the omega she deserves. No distractions!Except that a mere two weeks after his return, he wakes up to an increasingly frantic series of missed texts from Deadpool, needing emergency help with his rut. And while he's figuring that out, Miles Morales shows up—only for Miles, it hasn't been two weeks since the Collider Incident—it's been ten years.Peter has got alotgoing on in his dimension, likea lot, so is it his fault he sent a sext to the wrong person? MJ and Miles are right next to each other in his phone!
Relationships: Miles Morales/Peter B. Parker, Miles Morales/Peter B. Parker/Mary Jane Watson/Wade Wilson, Peter B. Parker/Mary Jane Watson, Peter B. Parker/Wade Wilson
Comments: 22
Kudos: 92





	1. In Which the Author Cannot Stop Worldbuilding

**Author's Note:**

> I read the basic prompt "PBP accidentally sexts Miles instead of MJ" on an archive of a 4chan thread and suddenly the idea was planted and took on a life of its own, growing from a quick PWP into some kind of love square monstrosity.
> 
> I've tagged based on where I currently expect the story to go but it could go a very different direction. Buckle up.

By the end of his first week back from Earth-1610, Peter B. Parker had delivered flowers and a heartfelt, on his knees request for MJ to forgive him and give him another chance; that if she was willing to take him back, he’d be the omega she deserved, including bearing however many kids she wanted.

MJ had furrowed her lovely brows in a concerned way as she stared at him, down on his knees on the laminate floor of her tidy apartment, wearing a grey suit.

Cautiously, as one might approach a feral dog, she leaned forward a little. “Tiger, are you feeling alright? Did something happen?”

“Well… there was a bit of… dimensional switchy-switchy, sort of a deal,” Peter waved his fingers awkwardly, “but it just opened to my eyes to what a pit I’d landed myself in, all out of just… fear. Fear, and not trusting you, not _valuing_ you, like you deserve.”

The brows lifted, and Peter got a sinking feeling of deja vu in his gut, remembering the 1610-MJ looking at him with exactly that skepticism for being an insane waiter ranting about her deserving bread.

“So… like a kind of near-death experience, or…”

“No, no, I wasn’t mortally wounded or anything, like, pssh,” Peter faltered under MJ’s all-too-perceptive gaze, “I mean, did I think I was gonna, like, die, of course, yeah, I might have, once or twice, no more than usual… I mean you know the job!”

“I sure do.”

Oh, that didn’t sound good.

“MJ… I know this is sudden, but I… is it so hard to believe I could really want to change…?” The question wasn’t accusatory, but rather insecure.

“You’re wearing your funeral suit, Peter.”

“That’s not fair. I don’t have other suits.”

“I know. You hate wearing suits. When we would go out—”

“I’m trying to show I’m taking this seriously!”

 _“Don’t_ interrupt me!”

Brown eyes stared petulantly back at blue for a moment before he recalled that, _shit,_ he was supposed to be _begging for forgiveness_ here. “I’m sorry for interrupting, I was just…” He blew out a breath, all those couple’s counseling sessions floating back in his head. “I really... I feel… frustrated that it isn’t coming across like I mean.”

“Peter, I’ve never doubted that you mean well.” MJ sat back up, and Peter could just _see_ her body language closing off. “But you don’t know what I went through, us divorcing, and you literally… cut me out of your body, like I was cancer… and watching what us falling apart did to you, before and after...”

Peter couldn’t keep his eyes on her pained face. It was psychosomatic, it had to be, but it felt like the surgical scar from where he’d had his left mating gland removed to cancel their bond was throbbing.

“I’m sorry, Peter. I think… No. Just… I’m really sorry. I was going to say what I think, about what you’re doing and why, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t go back to trying to figure you out. I’m just sorry.”

And he can’t blame her.

Still. He can’t just give up already, right?

Not if he always gets back up.

Peter stands up and squares his shoulders, looking MJ in the eye. “I get it, and I will let it go if that’s what you want, so I’m just gonna ask one thing. I’m sincere, MJ. I know not a lot of time passed here in this universe while I was in the other one, but enough time passed for me over there to really get a reality check about us, about why I was afraid of having kids, and why I kept you shut out. It would be different— _I_ would be different, if you’d give me another chance. You can have all the time you want to think about it. But I know I’m asking for something I don’t deserve and it’s your right if you don’t want me to bother you. Here’s all I’m gonna ask right now: is it alright for me to have hope?”

A slow smile appeared on MJ’s face, and Peter’s heart sped up a little. She kept her eyes on his as she stood up too, and extended a hand, which Peter took.

“Tiger,” she said, “the last thing I ever wanted in this world was for you to not have any hope. I can see that old light again in your eyes and it’s great, I don’t want to snuff it out, but…”

She tugged him forward, not into her arms, but close enough for her to lay one elegant finger on the divot between his collar bones, visible where his shirt’s top buttons were undone.

“You _always_ wear the suit. Always. You had it under your tux at our wedding, for crying out loud. The only time you don’t wear it is funerals… and the day we got divorced. So what am I supposed to think when this is what you wear to ask me to take you back, when you tell me you want kids? It’s like you think that having a family with me is your own funeral.” He opened his mouth, and MJ’s finger flew up to quiet his lips. “And before you interrupt, that’s not just some overreach thing I came up with just now. You should remember very well from counseling, I’ve always thought you’re afraid of getting pregnant because you think it means killing Spider-Man.”

“And I’ve always said that wasn’t it,” Peter said when MJ pulled her finger off his lips to indicate she was done.

“I know. And yet you show up here dressed like that.” She let go of his hand and shrugged, but smiled. “I don’t know, Peter. I loved you so much for so long, and breaking our bond broke my heart. It’s a lot to ask for, a second chance. But when you ask me if you can have hope…” She laughed ruefully. “You know how to charm a girl, Peter Parker.”

———

During the second week after his interdimensional walkabout, Peter woke up on a Thursday to find he had forgotten to plug in his phone and it was dead. When he got it charging, he found 7 missed calls and dozens of texts from Wade “Deadpool” Wilson, who had apparently gone into rut unexpectedly and hoped Peter could help him out, ie let Wade fuck him til he passed out.

Peter winced as he read the texts deteriorate over the hours from fully coherent (if weird—it was still Wade) into fumbled mishmashes of letters before stopping altogether.

Wade had helped him with his first and only post-surgical heat, and it had actually been… very nice. The merc was crazy, like “the voices in my head don’t agree with each other” crazy, and he killed for money, and Peter had always found Deadpool’s fawning public crush on Spider-Man to be an unfunny joke at his expense.

Peter had been at a nadir of self-loathing and had mentioned his upcoming doctor-ordered heat to Deadpool at least half out of a desire to punish himself for even thinking of letting anyone touch him after what he’d done to MJ. What he’d done to himself. He hadn’t expected the merc to show up at his shitty apartment in sincere acceptance of the sarcastic offer.

The heat should have been an absolute disaster even without a psychopath alpha as a heat companion. His hormones had been going crazy from having an entire gland surgically removed, a catastrophic shock to his endocrine system that not only meant his remaining gland had to try to work twice as hard but that caused cascading effects to his thyroid and other systems. He’d already been a mental mess but now his oxytocin and other brain chemicals were careening from highs to lows as his body struggled to find a new normal, and as for the physical symptoms of heat, sometimes his cunt would leak so bad he felt like a dripping faucet, and then othertimes he was so dry that Deadpool had to use lube he’d brought. Peter had never needed lube in his life and he was sobbing that he was a complete failure even at being an omega in heat… and Deadpool had made him laugh because the lube was banana flavoured, and he had brought a variety of other flavours, and excitedly described this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to have a “fruit salad heat”.

That’s how he was during the whole heat. It was totally different from MJ; heats with her had always been serious and romantic. Wade was silly and tender by turns, always seeming to know when Peter needed to be distracted or teased out of despair versus when he needed to be praised and lavished with attention.

And then there was the fact that he’d revealed his real face and his real name, at the beginning, showing up when Peter was still coherent enough to understand, to consent.

“Wade Wilson and Peter Parker,” Wade had said, “they ought to make a PSA about giving kids alliterative names, right? ‘Did you know that by giving your child the same letter for all their initials you have increased the chance of them having a horrible life as a superpowered freak by at least 52%?’”

“I don’t have the same—ah fuck, yes, right there—”

Wade had obediently increased his attentions on a particular area of Peter’s lower back, where he was experiencing terrible cramps between waves of heat, despite the fact that Wade’s knot was currently firmly stuck inside him. “You were saying?” he’d said, to get Peter’s mind back off the pain.

“Don’t have the same middle initial—middle name’s Benjamin, after—go down a little—my uncle.”

“Ah, that explains why you’re better than me, then,” Wade had said cheerfully, lowering his thumbs down either side of Peter’s spine, “mine’s Winston. Still, could be worse. Imagine if it was Wayne, the serial killer middle name—world’d be fucked for sure.”

Spider-Man didn’t laugh at Deadpool’s jokes, but Peter laughed at Wade’s.

The long and the short of it was that Wade had shown Peter a whole other, inner side of himself, along with his name and his pockmarked, inflamed skin. He’d rolled with every punch of Peter’s volatile heat with no complaints, been an ideal heat companion, never pushing boundaries, always putting Peter’s comfort first.

The very least he deserved was a response when he needed a rut companion in turn. MJ had been very clear that “you can have hope” didn’t mean she was putting any other romantic options or opportunities on hold, and that she didn’t expect or want him to hole himself up like some kind of fairy tale damsel in a tower of chastity. Helping someone in a rut or heat wasn’t even necessarily romantic; it was probably the most common “friends with benefits” scenario.

Peter wrote a text: “My phone was off, I’m really sorry. I’ll help if you get this before it’s over. Or get in touch when it’s done, I’ll buy you beer and pizza.”

He turned the sound on the phone’s notifications to max and walked over to his fridge to see if he had enough milk for a bowl of cereal and a mug of coffee. He did, and it passed the sniff test. A good morning.

In addition to every other good thing she had been for him, God bless Mary Jane Watson for letting him take the coffee maker in the divorce.

With a moment of eco-guilt, Peter popped a coffee pod into the machine, then went to the bathroom, did his morning business, and did the thousand yard stare out of the window over the sink while he washed his hands…

...until his spider sense warbled in that odd, very specific way it had with the other Spider-People, and a moment later, Peter found himself staring at a pair of red-outlined blank white eyes in a black mask with a thin red webbing design. Miles’s mask—only it wasn’t, because this mask was being worn by someone who was clearly an adult man, and the spray painted logo was on a broad, muscular chest.

 _You’re like me,_ said Peter’s heart.

Out loud he said, slightly annoyed, “Do you know you’re stealing a _child’s_ look? Not very cool. He worked hard on that.”

The eyes widened. “But it’s me,” said a voice, familiar and not familiar; Miles’s voice, maybe a shade deeper, a little less of that tense eagerness. “I’m… y’know… who you’re thinking.”

“Oh what the… Nope! I’m not doing it. I’m not. I don’t care if you’re him or not.” Peter dropped the blinds on the window and turned away from the rapping on the pane.

“Hey… hey!” said the voice, with increasingly frantic knocking, and then, in a tone that, despite being spoken by an adult man, _still_ somehow tugged on Peter’s heart strings, “Please let me in?”

Peter closed the bathroom door behind him.

 _Do not let him in! You just did interdimensional travel, you are not going to do time travel two goddamn weeks later. Just stay strong and do not let him in. Do not! Do not let him in, he’s going to get you involved in some new bullshit, no, no no no no,_ **_do not let him in—_ **

Peter opened the window in his main room, and the black and red Spider-Man rolled through, knocking Peter’s desk chair over. Peter wrestled with the blinds, which tended to come down only at an angle.

“Oh wow, Peter,” Miles’s slightly older voice said, still behind the mask, looking around as he righted the chair he’d knocked over. “I mean, I gotta say, you look great man, but… you still live like this…?”

“It’s been two weeks,” Peter said testily, flipping the blinds to closed and then fussing over the ones that didn’t want to flip the right direction.

“Two weeks?” The Spider-Man pulled his mask off. “It’s been ten years!”

“Not in my universe, kid.” Peter looked Miles up and down. He still had those warm, sweet eyes, but the strong-jawed face around them had grown, which meant they didn’t look quite as big. His hair was buzzed, with a clean, stylish fade. “Young man. Whatever. Well, you’ve managed to make it ten years as Spider-Man, so you’ve tied your universe’s record, right? Congratulations.”

Miles chuckled sheepishly. “You’re really just like I remembered. Does anything shake you?”

“Of course I’m just like you remembered, I literally just said it’s been two weeks. Keep up.” Peter leaned against the wall. “So what brings you to this universe, and don’t say another collider. Or anything that involves me having to do work again already.”

Miles lifted his hands. “No work this time, promise! Well… I guess it depends on what you mean by work, but uh… well… there was this supervillain, Molecule Man. The first time I encountered—”

Peter groaned. “Can you make a long story short?”

“Uh…” Miles frowned and concentrated. “How to sum it up… I offered to have my existence erased to save my universe? And instead of just, totally letting me be erased, he arranged to have my atoms rewired to this one, because he felt sorry for me… so now I’m here forever, I guess.”

Peter got a sick feeling in his stomach. “Your existence erased?”

“Yeah, like… that part’s… not ideal…” Miles rubbed his muscular shoulder. “I guess it’s for the best. My parents and friends won’t miss me, because they have no idea I ever existed… my parents had another baby, too, so, at least they’ll still get to be parents… I’m just sorry I won’t get to see Billie grow up—that’s my sister’s name, Billie.”

“Wow, kid…”

“Don’t feel too bad. I mean, I saved them one last time, right? And hey, I’m not even dead! Like, I was full on prepared to die. And instead I’m here…” Miles looked around. “In your unpacked apartment… seriously you haven’t unpacked? I mean I know you said two weeks but I’ve moved before, man, it did not take me two weeks to unpack.”

“Kinda don’t have anywhere to put that stuff,” Peter muttered, looking at the boxes. “Look around you. This is it. Bathroom’s through there. This—” he gestured at the stove—”is the kitchen. And that’s all.”

Miles blinked. “Oh… then I guess… well, never mind.”

 _Do not ask. Do not ask him. Do not—_ “What’s wrong?”

Miles still had his hand fidgeting on his own shoulder. “Well, like… this dude was like, you know, to solve the glitching thing, he’d make me ‘native to this universe’ but like… he didn’t exactly explain _how_ or what… so I don’t know if I have an identity here, or anything, and… was kinda hoping you’d let me stay with you while I figured it out. It was just an idea I got when I saw you. See, my spider sense pulled me this way and I didn’t know why.” Miles grinned, rubbing at his nose. “Was so relieved when I looked through the…” There’s a longer than normal hold on _the_ as Miles seems to suddenly realize something, his finger freezing on his nose. “...window and saw you, but uh. Am I… interrupting something?”

Miles’s nose rub reminded Peter of the glorious smell of the finished coffee, and he grabbed for his mug to caffeinate. “Interrupting what? Do not be vague, you’re talking to me before coffee. Actually, make it easy, be obnoxiously clear about what you were implying.”

Miles cleared his throat. “Well. I can… smell an omega, so… I thought maybe you had somebody over.”

Peter choked a little on his coffee, and put the mug down on the counter. “Hold the phone. Did you not know… oh. Yeah, I guess I just wore my suit for a few days straight around you… huh. Scent dampeners must be longer-lasting than I thought… or maybe because you were still a kid…” He trailed off, because he could see that Miles just staring at him, uncomprehending, and smiled. “Miles, _I’m_ an omega.”

Miles’s eyes went fully as big as they had been back at the collider. “Oh. Oh my God. Oh, this is so embarrassing… man, I am so sorry!”

Peter laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, it makes sense you’d assume I was a beta.” _Not just from the lack of gland-scent, either. Hard to believe now that I used to be a twink who couldn’t grow a beard._

“I actually assumed you were an alpha,” Miles said, his body still skewed with awkwardness in his confession. “Which is dumb, because it’s not like only alphas can be heroes, but _my_ universe’s Spider-Man was an alpha, so I just… thought you were...”

“Perfect Me was an alpha?” Peter raised his eyebrows, then sighed. _Right. Because he was the Perfect Me._

Miles laughed. “You think of him as Perfect You?”

“If the shoe fits the blonde supermodel,” Peter said.

Miles laughed again, then seemed to recall that he was embarrassed. “Well, that shoots down my idea of crashing here for good, anyway. You don’t have the space, and then I’m an alpha on top of it.” He started to put his mask back on.

“Hey, whoa,” Peter said, even though he hadn’t wanted to get involved in some new disaster, “you really think I’m gonna let you, what… sleep under a bridge? Take a cot in a homeless shelter?”

“But all you got is a single mattress on the floor.”

“That’s—it’s on wooden slats, okay, that’s a completely different thing,” Peter defended himself, and took a gulp of coffee with a sense of injury. “What, you think I’m too cheap to buy you a sleeping bag? It’s pay back for that burger breakfast.”

———

“You like that one?”

Miles snapped out of his reverie and dropped the tag on the North Face sleeping bag he’d been staring at. “No, no, I was just musing about how weird it is, how close some of the names are, it’s like walking around in a world of knock-offs. I’m used to a brand called the North Peak… this would probably be too warm for your apartment, anyway.”

“Right… what do you think about this one? Seems like it’ll be long enough for you.” Peter held out a bag and Miles took it and looked at the tag, but his mind was immediately wandering again.

Even standing this close to Peter, he couldn’t smell that he was an omega _at all._ How did Peter do that? Sure, Miles used scent blocking in his suit to reduce the risk of someone figuring out his real identity by smell, but it wasn’t this complete…

Peter probably thought Miles was being a total space cadet, because Miles hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything during the subway ride either. He’d kept thinking about that recurring wet dream he’d had as a teenager, where he fucked and claimed Peter in the vents at Alchemax. It had always been one of the wildest, “brains are really fucking bonkers” things in his life, something that made absolutely no sense, because the vents hadn’t _at all_ been a sexy experience at the time; plus Peter was _an alpha too._ Or so he’d berated himself every time he woke up in sticky sheets. Plus, he liked girls, he really did! And it would be difficult to come up with a body _less_ like a girl’s than Peter’s…

...and yet he would have the dream again, and while he was dreaming, there was nothing else he wanted than Peter’s thick thighs and soft stomach, his deep moans and his strong hands scrabbling, weak with pleasure, against the metal.

Had his subconscious somehow realized that this Peter was an omega? Was that why his dreams had latched onto Peter as his unattainable, number one pinnacle of desire?

Whatever the reason, it sure made his decision to come to universe 616 way less straightforward. He’d picked 616 when Molecule Man offered him the choice because—despite the, he’d thought, nonsensical dreams—Peter was the Spider-Person he’d thought he would best be able to reconnect with. He’d seriously considered Gwen, but in ten years—he’d thought—Gwen would be in her crazy early twenties, just like him, whereas Peter would probably be retired, maybe Miles could be “Uncle Miles” to his kids…

“Yeah, this looks good,” Miles said, holding the sleeping bag back out to Peter without any idea what he thought about it.

“Great, okay. One task down, two to go.”

“What are the other two?” Miles asked as he followed Peter to the register.

“Cut you a copy of my key, and set up a phone.”

———

Miles tried out his copy of the keys—he had also bought a squat little Spider-Man doll keychain to keep it on, which made Peter roll his eyes but also look kind of pleased—when they got back to the older man’s place.

“Spider-Man, Spider-Man, opens doors like a Spider can,” Miles sang to himself once they got inside, holding up the keys and letting the little doll sway side to side on its chain.

“Very cute,” Peter said, shifting a box over and pulling another out from the stack to drop on his desk. “You know that’s definitely a knock off. I didn’t get a penny out of that. Anyway come pick a phone.”

Miles walked over, and indeed, the moving box was about half full of phones.

“I did forget a tip with you,” Peter said, back to rearranging the stack of boxes. “In addition to the baby powder and the disinfecting the mask—you’re doing both those things, right?”

“Right.”

“Good. Well, the third tip is to get an endorsement deal for phones and phone cases. Because I break either a phone or a case every month.”

Miles grinned and pulled a phone from the box, putting it on the wireless charging pad on the desk. “Yeah, it took me a while to get to the point where I could do endorsements, though, you know. I did spend a lot of money on phones. I guess now I’ll have to start over, in terms of getting a rep…”

Suddenly he wanted to just unzip that sleeping bag and zip himself inside it and hide. Starting _everything_ over. No friends. No family. No _identity,_ maybe…

“Why is it always the bottom box,” Peter was muttering, then said slightly louder, “I assume you want a black case? To blend with the suit? Most of these are grey but I have a couple black.”

“Thanks, Peter.” Miles smiled as the scruffy man came over, bitching again about how hard it was to open blister cases.

“I’ll probably have to be on the phone a little while, getting your phone line added,” Peter said when he finally got the case out and popped the phone into it before putting back to charge. “You hungry? We can order something.”

“I can cook,” Miles said, “my mom taught me, so, if you want…”

“Hey, live-in chef, I could get used to that,” Peter said. “What kind of food?”

“American… Puerto Rican…?”

“What’s Puerto Rican food like?”

“The best,” Miles said with a bit of heat. “You’ve never had our food?”

“Well, even if I did, it’ll only be the best if it’s home cooking, right?” Peter grabbed for his wallet. “How much do you need to get stuff for lunch and dinner?”

“Shouldn’t be much, if you got a good store around here… thirty or forty grand?”

“Thirty or forty _grand?”_ Peter said. “Jesus, what happened to inflation in your New York? Here, take forty dollars and bring me back change.”

“Wow,” said Miles, looking at the bills Peter handed him, “you know in my universe, Alexander Hamilton is on the fifty grand bill.”

“Well, in this universe he’s on the ten. And Broadway.”

“Oh, awesome, this universe still has Hamilton? My universe has Hamilton! Hey, you know, Lin-Manuel Miranda is Puerto Rican too. See? The best.”

Peter laughed. “The best food and musicals?”

“And superheroes,” Miles dared.

“Oh, you better make me some good food to make up for that one kid.”

———

When Miles got back to Peter’s apartment with the ingredients for picadillo and rice, the apartment was empty. Once he got the stuff away, he picked up his new phone off the charging mat and found it had a text.

“Best Spider-Man”, huh? Miles snickered but didn’t change it.

Instead of going to look around the physical neighbourhood, Miles decided instead that he would spend this time browsing the internet and getting his bearings on his new, probably permanent universe, including any leads he could get on his possible identity here, if one existed.

He was hungry though so he also cooked himself some quick scrambled eggs with sofrito. Man, he was almost surprised his abuela hadn’t reached across the dimensions to smack the back of his head for buying pre-made sofrito...

Another reminder that he’d never see Abuela again… Abuela wouldn’t even recognize him if she did see him…

Well. He’d remember her, no matter what.

Emotional breakdown checked, Miles ate his eggs, washed up, and sat down on Peter’s mattress to use the phone browser… and then he laid back… and then he closed his eyes…

Miles jerked back awake from the sound of someone turning the key in the door, going invisible as a conditioned reflex. It was dark inside Peter’s room, so he must have been asleep a couple hours.

He _stayed_ invisible because this new intruder was _not Peter._ This man was dressed in a red and black costume as well, but he was taller than Peter, with swords and guns. The intruder flicked on the lightswitch and looked around, showing seemingly no reaction to Miles’s invisible presence.

Then the man reached into a pocket, and Miles tensed in case he was going to get out a weapon or explosive, but instead he pulled out a phone in a case with a Hello Kitty pattern.

“Hey, I thought we were meeting at your place,” the man said after dialing someone. Was he talking to Peter? “No, nobody’s here, unless they’re invisible… what, no shit?” The man looked around again. “Uh… yoohoo... is there anyone here who’s invisible?”

Miles was torn. It could be a trap. He decided to play it cautious and stay invisible for now.

“I think we’re alone now,” the man sang some pop song into the phone after stepping into Peter’s apartment and doing another circle around without finding Miles. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone—okay, shutting. See ya when I see ya, baby boy… oh! I see ya!”

A moment later there’s a sound at the window, and then it opens, and in comes Peter, in Spider-Man costume. This would have been a good, natural point for Miles to reveal his presence, except his mind was trying to wrap around this man calling Peter _baby boy_ and _then_ he was holding back a gasp because the stranger took off his mask and said, teasingly but there was something more to it, “Welcome home, honey! Give mama a kiss!”

And wow was that a face only a mother could love.

Peter must not have minded, because he pulled off his own mask and let the intruder kiss him on the mouth—no tongue, but still!

And it was then that Miles realized he may have to remain invisible until he dies.


	2. In Which the B. Stands for Breaking Hearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wade's thought boxes/voices in his head are represented by italics and brackets.

_ [Wow—didn’t expect that one to work, huh?] _

“Ass—you distracted me, now the kiss is already over,” Wade muttered, as Peter turned his mask inside out and grabbed a squirt bottle to mist it over before clipping it to a string hanging from the ceiling. “Uh, what’s with the squirt?”

“Disinfecting the mask. Stops breakouts…” Peter glanced at Wade. “Not something you really have to worry about, I guess.”

“What, pimples? Nah, they add visual interest,” Wade joked. “Could we go back to the kissing thing? Do over, I wasn’t in the moment the last time.”

Peter rolled his eyes but holy shit he actually stepped forward, close enough to  _ hug _ and pat and call George, and kissed Wade again. Too brief again, but at least Wade was able to experience it, and better still, Peter didn’t step away this time. “I’d offer you a seat, but I kind of only have the one chair.”

“I’m good with standing just like this,” Wade said, trying to figure out if there was some way that he could close the couple inches of space between him and Peter, maybe by moving in ultra slow motion.

_ {Can you move in ultra slow motion? You know what, worth a try, if it means you might get to cup that ass.} _

Before he could extremely slowly spring into action, Peter was moving away again, towards his one room apartment’s little built-in kitchenette. “Drink? I did promise you beer. How’d your rut end so fast, anyway?”

“Magnum through the brainstem. It’s gotta be the brainstem, bee tee double-you. Bit of a tricky aim when you’re so far gone you’re trying to hump your own ass, but I got it first try this time.”

Peter stared at him with the fridge door open. “Is that what you usually do?”

“Only when I don’t have a partner!”

_ {Techically correct. The best kind!} _

_ [Pathetic.] _

Peter grabbed a couple of beers and nudged the fridge shut, then started rummaging in a drawer.

“I got a bottle opener on my belt,” Wade said, bounding up and getting right back in that couple of inches away zone.

“Cheers.”

They clinked bottles and there was a moment of silent drinking. Well, silent for Peter, presumably.

_ [Oohhh look at that throat scar. It’s like,  _ undulating _ while he drinks. So sexy. So noble.] _

_ {He does still have one open gland!} _

_ [IT’S FREE REAL ESTATE!] _

Peter leaned against his kitchen counter, and Wade tried not to stare too obviously at how Peter’s ass squished around the edge of the counter and compare it to his memory of how it had felt under his fingers while he fucked Peter from behind. “So, we can call this a part one on the beer and pizza. I can’t do the pizza today, because Miles already bought the stuff to make dinner, but we’ll make a time, okay? I feel bad and I don’t like that.” He rubbed the adorable bend in his nose.

“You know there’s a great pizza place on my block. You could spend the night?”

_ {Tell him you’ve got a fireplace!] _

“I’ve got a fireplace,” Wade added, then frowned. “Do I?”

_ [You don’t.] _

_ {We could put one in! We all hate your upstairs neighbours anyway.} _

_ [That’s true.] _

“Anyway,” Wade said, because he could see that Peter was getting wary, “haha, funny joke, but, uh, I mean, we could make it romantic.”  _ Oh God why did I bring up the r-word already?! _

_ [Because you’re pathetic.] _

Peter wiped a bead of condensation off his bottle with his finger, not looking at Wade. “Oh. Um… well… see, I went to another dimension, and—”

“Oh my  _ God. _ Don’t tell me you came back with a new lease on life. You fool! Did you read the terms and conditions before you signed the lease? Did you crunch all the numbers for the risk/benefit analysis about whether it’s better to lease or to buy outright? No? In  _ this _ economy?! Peter, Peter, Peter!”

Peter laughed, which was good, because if he was laughing, that meant he couldn’t be telling Wade shit he didn’t want to hear. “Well, it’s true I don’t have a good record on investments.”

“Lucky for you there is nobody better than weaseling out of contracts than me.” Wade took a deep breath and decided to make a grab for the wheel of the conversation. “What is it? Thinking about bonding again?”

“Uh… yeah, actually… stupid, I know, but…”

Wheel officially grabbed! Now to turn it. “Ahahaha! That’s not  _ stupid.” _ He put on his winningest smile.

_ {I think that was more effective when you didn’t look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man took a thousand blow torches—} _

“I mean,” Wade rushed on, before the voice could get him distracted enough to let Peter grab the wheel back, “it all depends on who you want to bond  _ with, _ right? For instance, I’m available. Interested and willing, too!”

This time Peter did not laugh. He looked nonplussed. Not a  _ great _ reaction, but not the worst possible one either. But then his scruffy face got a little more serious, and he said, “Wade, I meant—”

More serious was headed in the wrong direction. “Sure, but give me one good reason why I wouldn’t be a good alpha for you. Just one! One reason and mum’s the word forever. Swearsies.” He put up three fingers in a scout salute.

Peter smiled again, so the car was back on all four wheels at least. “One reason huh? Let’s see. You’re an insane mercenary with no regard for human life.”

“Half credit. I give you the insane mercenary bit, but it’s not true that I have no regard for human life. I regard human life so much. ‘Wow, check out that human life,’ that’s my motto, everyone knows that. All day long. All  _ night _ long, if I was lucky enough to be bonded to you.”

There was a weird kind of choked noise from behind them, and they both turned swiftly.

Nothing there.

“Fucking rats,” said Peter, and took another drink. “They’re in the walls, I swear.”

“Oh, a good Lovecraft story! One of the racist ones, though. But aren’t they all. So you’re at half a point. Gotta get to one, baby boy. And you can’t say the nickname’s a dealbreaker, because I know you love that.”

Peter’s ears went red and he took another drink instead of denying it. “You’re immortal. I’m just gonna get older and older, and you won’t.”

“Nope. No credit. We’re talking about reasons  _ you _ shouldn’t choose me, not me choose you. That’d be a me reason, if it  _ was _ a reason, which it isn’t, because I would be the happiest trophy husband in the retirement village. I love bingo, I love shuffleboard, I love  _ the Golden Girls… _ hey, actually, how old do you have to be to live in a retirement village? Sixty? You know with this face I bet I could pass as sixty.”

Peter chuckled. “Not with that body.”

_ {Laughing! Complimenting your body! All good things! Pull it into the station!} _

“And I’ve got one advantage that you cannot get from just any alpha off Tinder. Extreme healing factor means I can’t get STDs. I’ve tried, they just bounce off! And a sweet combination of cancer and hellish medical experiments means that my balls are as decorative as the pair hanging off a redneck’s truck. Think of all the money you’ll save on birth control.”

Wade really thought that last reason was a slam dunk. After all, he knew very well that Peter didn’t want kids, that he had broken his bond with MJ chiefly because of that. He had held Peter while he cried about what a shitty partner and parent he’d be. This was one thing he  _ knew. _

“That’s the thing, Wade. The thing that really changed. I…” Peter made eye contact, bashful but steady. “I want to have kids.”

The voices were silent, probably because it couldn’t get worse than just standing in silence with Peter looking at him like that.

Wade cleared his throat. “Right. That makes… square root… carry the one… one point five good reasons not to bond with me, then. Okay, deal’s a deal.” He mimed zipping, then mimed unzipping to chug the rest of the beer, then zipped his lips again and held out the empty bottle.

Peter took it and stuck it in the sink.

Wade lasted about five seconds before miming unzipping again. “So when I said mum’s the word forever—”

“Figure of speech.”

“Right, right, phew. Because I don’t know  _ how _ I’m going to extract myself from this horrifically embarrassing situation without talking, talking, talking, blah, blah, blah, laugh to hide the pain, I’m gonna go, are my legs moving yet, are they moving now, I think they are, goodbye, I’m going, goodbye, goodbye!”

Wade yanked the door closed behind him and screamed like an arachnophobe as he fled from Spider-Man.

———

Peter took a few empty bottles down to the corner for the deposit just for some busy work. When he returned to the apartment with a new quarter in his wallet, Miles was back and already cooking.

It was a nice evening, having somebody there with him instead of just nature documentaries, and Miles wasn’t lying when he said he could cook.

“That was amazing,” Peter said, leaning back against the brick after polishing off thirds. “I’m sold on Puerto Rican statehood. If we want to keep the number at fifty, we can go swapsies with Alabama. Or we could make it a very, very distant borough of New York City.”

They talked in more depth about the circumstances that led to Miles switching universe and also about how the rest of the ten years had gone. Miles had graduated college and begun doing freelance graphic design, which allowed him to work around the unpredictable hero business stuff.

“Hot water can be iffy,” Peter said, “so we should probably pick who does night vs morning showers now. Is it okay if I go night? I didn’t shower this morning.”

“Yeah, no problem. I’ll wash up—hey, no, you’re letting me crash for free remember, I can wash up.”

Peter sat on the toilet first and saw on his phone that it was already past eleven. Time sure had flown, chatting with Miles. He smiled a little. It would be nice to have another good friend, someone so easy and fun to be with.

Once he got in the hot water he thought about Deadpool… Wade.

He didn’t know what to make of their conversation at all. His mind had been all over the place. Sometimes it even made all his old suspicions about Deadpool rear back, giving Peter that old sour vulnerable feeling, that this was all a long set up to mock Peter for believing someone cared about him. That bullying defense radar that he had developed long before spider sense.

But if Wade was serious about wanting to bond with Peter, under all that snark and mania…

Peter scrubbed his face with a washcloth. It also didn’t feel great that Wade had taken his own infertility as “the good reason” Peter was rejecting him, and run off literally screaming.

But it wasn’t like it would be better if Peter would call Wade back and be like, “No, wait, forget the infertility; more importantly, I’m in love with MJ, not you! Just wanted to rub that in your disfigured face!”

And that just brought up MJ…

MJ…

How he missed her and wanted to contact her again soon. The touch of her finger on his throat… even just that, if she would give him even just that again… but MJ could be so passionate and unrestrained, oh, did he know that well.

God, MJ in rut was something… when they were bonded their rut and heat synced and it was always three days of bliss, hooooo man, what Peter wouldn’t give to experience that again...

_ Wow it didn’t take a lot to suddenly switch me around to horny. _

He shut off the water because he was done, rubbed himself down briskly with the towel, and looked at his phone where it was sitting on top of the closed toilet lid.

Giving in to the impulse, and thinking 99% with his genitals instead of his brain, he grabbed and unlocked his phone, quickly scrolled in his contacts to the Ms, and shot a text to MJ.

  
  


_ Oh wow, she went for it, _ Peter thought giddily. He sucked in his gut, faced the mirror on the back of the bathroom door, hiked one leg up on the rim of the tub, and took a couple of snaps. He couldn’t exactly say that he thought he looked  _ great _ in any of them, but they definitely showed he was both hard and wet, so he took a quick breath and texted over the one that looked the least blurry. Then he waited.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Peter stared at the rapidly incoming series of texts with disbelieving joy. It was unexpected for MJ to be this speechless and sincerely appreciative from a sext. Usually when he sexted her, she would shoot back something like “come over and I’ll help with that” with a winky emoji, or if he was a little less lucky, just say “looking sexy Tiger” and leave it at that… and with the hormone issues and the depression and everything, he was definitely both thicker and hairier than he had been the last time she saw him naked... maybe despite everything she really had missed him like he had missed her…

Then another message came in.

_ wanna see how much I like it? _

_ YES _ Peter typed back immediately one handed, because he was fondling his dick with the other. Would she actually send him a dick pic?! Probably not, but even a picture of her face looking horny would be enough fuel to get him to orgasm.

And again he didn’t have to wait long.

But the image message that came in wasn’t of MJ.

It was taken from top down while the person knelt. Definitely also an alpha, from the dick size and the telltale striations around the base where the knot would form, but  _ this _ alpha was uncircumcised with brown skin and untrimmed black pubic hair while MJ was cut and always had a perfectly groomed reddish-brown landing strip on her pale skin; instead of womanly curves, this alpha had chiseled abs and muscular thighs and a  _ very _ impressive erection standing out vividly against a creamy white bedspread with a thick solid blue stripe  _ hold on that’s Peter’s fucking mattress?! _

Peter didn’t want to look up at the name at the top of the text messages, but he did.

“Miles” it said.

Not MJ.

Miles!!!!

Peter squeezed his eyes shut. His blood sounded so loud in his ears. Maybe he was having a stroke, which would at least get him out of this situation. Alas, he felt vibrations in his hand, and when he finally reopened his eyes, the phone was still there, with new messages.

What was he supposed to say? To someone who just showed him his dick, in the understandable belief that Peter had initiated the whole exchange and wanted to see it? To someone who was right on the other side of the door he was currently facing? Open that door and be like, “Whoopsy daisy, thought I was sexting my ex-wife, haha, nice dick but please put it away now and let’s forget this ever happened, bud”?

He found himself scrolling up a little to look at the image. He’d already been able to tell that Miles had an amazing body, and now he knew that Miles had an amazing dick to go with it.

_ He’s so thick and long. Fuck. He’d have to be gentle fucking me… but Miles would be gentle… unless I asked him to be rough. Oh God, he could  _ actually _ hold me down, like Wade did, but that was when I was in heat. Miles could probably pin me even not in heat, that’s hot as hell! _

_ If I open this door, Miles could pin me down and fuck me right now. He wants to. He wants me. _

_ Ohhhhhh do I want it too! _

_ Okay. Okay, this would be okay, right? Consensual, check. MJ told me I didn’t have to wait while she considers giving me another chance, check. And this would just be a one time thing, right? He’s curious about fucking a DILF, whatever, it wouldn’t be serious—yeah. Definitely this is okay. Yes! Justification success! _

Slick was dribbling down Peter’s inner thigh when he pulled the door open and stepped through, holding the towel loosely at his side. Miles had his boxers and a t-shirt back on and was kneeling, unzipping his sleeping bag with his back to Peter.

“It’s cool man,” Miles laughed awkwardly without turning around. “I know how it is, no worries.”

“No, it’s my bad. Just took me a minute to wrap my mind around the idea of taking something that big inside me.”

Miles jerked his whole body around and then nearly fell to one side, catching himself on his hand, his wide eyes going up and down Peter’s whole body as his mouth popped open. “Oh wow.”

“You said that already.” Peter grinned, even though it was wild that Miles was looking at him like  _ he _ was the one with the  _ Men’s Health _ cover model body. “Got anything else to say?”

“N-not really,” said Miles, then smiled too, and yanked his shirt back off. “Would love to  _ do _ something though.”

“Makes two of us.” Peter walked to the mattress, pulled aside the bedspread, and put the damp but workable towel down, folded, as a makeshift mattress protector, bending over rather than squatting in hopes that Miles might like the view.

A sharp breath, and then Miles came up behind him.

Peter turned slowly, sitting on the middle of the towel with his knees up and leaning back on his hands, trying to play it casual, since he was about to basically suggest a kink. “You know, I was wondering if you’re strong enough to pin me down. Not for us to  _ really _ fight, of course—I want my damage deposit on this crap heap back eventually—but you know—”

Miles grabbed both of Peter’s ankles and pulled, meaning that lifting up his arms could only make his back fall to the mattress, and within a couple seconds Miles had managed to get Peter pinned under his own legs, and when Peter tried to pull Miles hands off of his calves—at first just normally, and then actually exerting his full strength—he couldn’t pull him off.

If it  _ had _ been a serious fight there would have been other options but since it wasn’t… Peter actually got to  _ enjoy _ being pinned. Which was definitely a new experience.

“You’re so flexible,” Miles said with admiration, and looked at Peter’s face a little anxiously. “This what you had in mind?”

“Don’t have much of a mind right now,” Peter admitted. “You’re really strong.”

“And you’re… wow.” Miles was looking down at his body again. “You’re…” He swallowed, and then kind of chuckled in a forced way. “Maybe I was wrong when I said you’re just like I remembered… I never realized you were so… that there’s so much…”

“Are you calling me fat again?” Peter teased.

“No! No, you're not—not that I would—I don't fat shame," Miles said, that last bit so serious that Peter cracked up even more. "No, but it's not—I think I need to shut up before I make you change your mind about this. Oh my God. I’m sorry I’m being all crazy, I’m just… can I just touch you instead of talking?”

———

Miles was so freaking glad that he liked giving oral sex because he could not seem to use his mouth any other way without saying something awkward and mood-breaking at best.

Now he was just listening to Peter moan and sigh as Miles explored his cute little dick and wet, inviting pussy with his tongue and fingers.

There really was  _ so much _ of Peter—the scent of him, even more now that he was up close and tasting him, the softness and the strength; Miles wanted to envelop himself in everything that was Peter. And if he didn’t say something  _ stupid _ and wreck it, Peter was going to take his knot and it would happen.

Staying invisible as Peter had that conversation with that other alpha had been horrendous, but now in a guilty way he was glad, because now he knew. Peter wanted kids—because of what happened at the collider, because of  _ Miles. _ Peter wanted to find an alpha and bond, because of  _ Miles. _

Miles was a very respectful, sensitive, maybe even “woke” kind of guy, and if he hadn’t been licking the slick off of Peter’s labia then he probably wouldn’t have thought about this in these terms, but the fact was that Miles was thinking:  _ if me as a kid made him want kids, then who better to give him kids than adult me? Ain’t nobody more likely to give him kids that resemble me than me! _

It made a lot of sense to his dick and balls, at the very least, as Miles climbed over Peter and pinned his wrists with one hand as he guided himself into Peter’s sopping channel. “This good?” he asked, anxious to please.

“Miles,” moaned Peter, wrapping his legs around Miles’s waist, “you are  _ so _ good.”

“You too,” Miles groaned back as he began to thrust, not exactly great love poetry, but he wasn’t even capable of complete sentences as he drove himself in and out of Peter. Everything so hot, and wet, and tight, and Peter’s feet on his back urging him on, and Peter’s arms struggling to get free with enough force that Miles actually had to work to keep him pinned. Which made his success keeping him pinned feel  _ amazing. _

_ I can’t believe I’m fucking Peter. I’m holding Spider-Man down and fucking him. My dick is inside Peter B. Parker’s pussy and his pussy feels fantastic! This is the best! I want to scream, this is so cool! _

Miles did not let himself scream. He was twenty-four years old! He could express his enjoyment in a mature, sexy way, something that showed he was as in command of the situation as he was in control of Peter’s wrists.

But then Peter started dirty talking before Miles could come up with anything. “Oh God, Miles, your thick cock is fucking my cunt so deep, I think I can feel you in my stomach… nggh, you’re so strong, the way you’re just using me, I love it, Miles, fuck me just like that, oh, oh, right there, yeah, oh yeah, I’m so close, I’m already so close. Ooh, Miles, oh, oh,  _ oh…” _

Miles moaned too as he fucked Peter through the orgasm, squeezing his eyes shut and having to turn his face away and think about that April Fool’s Day that Ganke thought it would be funny to swap his baby powder for itching powder, to keep himself from exploding too, because surely Peter expected stamina and—

“I want your knot,” groaned Peter, “I wanna come again around your knot, Miles, please—”

Stamina was history. “Ohhhh,” Miles cried out, his hips stuttering as he chased his high until his knot began to swell and he let himself drop down, in as deep as possible, pressing against Peter with his mouth instinctively going for Peter’s throat, even though Peter wasn’t in heat and bonding wasn’t currently possible.

The left side had a scar and when his lips touched it, Peter jerked his neck away and pulled his chin down. “That side’s busted,” he muttered.

“Sorry,” Miles apologized automatically.

“Not your fault.”

Oh, this was not going well already. They were being as intimate as it was possible to be right now, and yet Miles felt like the tone of how they were talking was more like that of two strangers who jostled each other at a crowded event.

But what did he say now?  _ That was great? You were wonderful? _ Too cliche and therefore forgettable, impersonal.

_ Peter, I think you are one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met and if you would let me be your alpha and sire your kids I would feel so lucky and treat you so good? _

Too momentous and personal!

“Hey, kid,” Peter said, “you don’t have to stress so much. I’m not gonna expect anything out of this.”

Oh no. Peter had noticed he was thinking hard but drawn exactly the wrong conclusion about why. “It’s not that at all—not that I, you know, I don’t wanna put it on you as like an expectation or whatever, but um…” Quickly, think Miles, some middle ground between  _ bond with me for life _ and  _ that was great. _ “I like you.”

Peter’s eyebrows went up.

_ Too much? Not enough? _

“Yeah, I know that Miles,” Peter said, puzzled. “I wasn’t worried that you lost your respect for me or anything.”

_ Way not enough! _ “No I mean… I mean for me having sex is about…”  _ Don’t say love! _ “I’d… maybe we could be… more than friends?”

“Ohhhh,” said Peter, in a tone which splashed cold water down Miles’s back. “You thought this was a… you wanted this to be a… ohhhh. Oh. Wow, Miles. I’m… really flattered.”

_ Flattered! The kiss of death! _

“I know I’m not as  _ much _ older than you as I was two weeks ago… which, mindscrew… but I’m still a thirty-eight year old divorced mess, Miles. I know I’m the only person you know in this universe, but, believe me, there are actually other people in my universe. Several billion, last I checked. And there’s gotta be at least a couple hundred thousand that aren’t hung up on their ex, like me.”

Normally Miles’s knot lasted about twenty minutes, but if this conversation kept making him feel this way he’d be surprised if it made it to ten. “So… you just sent me that text and…”

Now Peter looked guilty. “I guess it would have come out eventually… I hit the wrong name in my contacts. I didn’t realize until I got the picture that I was talking to you instead of MJ.”

Miles clenched his jaw for a moment, trying to will the heat out of his face. “Oh. So this was all a mistake for you.”

“Miles, I’m sorry, I should have come clean at the time but your picture really was hot and I was horny and I never imagined  _ you’d _ ever want more from  _ me. _ Kid… I really—”

“Can you at least not call me ‘kid’ while my dick is inside you,” Miles said, not looking at Peter’s face.

He heard Peter sigh. “Yeah, I deserve that. Miles. I really am sorry. I know it’s a cliche, but it’s not you, it’s me.”

All that effort trying not to fall into cliches and he gets brushed off by one. Miles pulled out the moment his knot was soft enough to allow it and got up to use the bathroom. He was too hurt to say anything.

Once he got in the bathroom, though, he got scared. What if this fucked up everything? Maybe Peter would kick him out now—he’d have every right to do it, after Miles reacted so hostile to being rejected. Maybe they’d never even be friends anymore!

“Peter,” he said, yanking the door open, “Peter, I’m sorry, I—what’s that?”

“You like ice cream?” Peter was standing awkwardly in front of the little fridge with a bowl. “I made you a bowl. Y’know, as an apology. This is about all the cooking I can do.”

Miles wanted to collapse with relief. “Peter, you don’t gotta apologize. I’m the guy who tried to make it too serious too fast. I’d really hate it if I didn’t have you as a friend anymore.”

“I’d never do that to you,” Peter said, holding out the bowl, and Miles took it. “It was my fault anyway. I’m just gonna sneak past you to the bathroom.”

Miles let Peter by and ate a spoonful of rocky road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how all that angst got in there I swear


	3. In Which Everybody Loves IKEA

Miles woke up to the sound of gentle drums and guitar coming out of Peter’s phone.

He turned over, still in the sleeping bag, and saw that Peter was still asleep with his Spider-Man mask over his face, a little askew. Peter was sleeping in an odd position, on his belly, with his knees tucked under him and butt way up in the air… ‘odd’ here standing also for ‘uncomfortably erotic.’ Uncomfortable because Peter was _so_ vulnerable like this, literally unconscious, and Miles felt like he shouldn’t _at all_ be staring at him thinking about ripping a hole in Peter’s suit and fucking him from behind.

Nope. Shouldn’t be thinking that.

 _“Two jumps in a week, I bet you think that’s pretty clever, don’t you boy?”_ a voice sang from Peter’s phone, and that made Peter stir. The older Spider-Man fumbled a gloved hand to his mask, lifted it clear of his face with his eyes still shut, opened them halfway, stared in a glazed way at his phone and Miles on the other side of it as if he wasn’t really seeing either, shut his eyes, pulled the mask back down and turned away.

Then he suddenly leapt not only out of bed but off the floor, onto the ceiling, and was staring down at Miles through the mask, the eye holes wide.

“Uh… good morning?” said Miles. “You sleep in the costume?”

Miles had fallen asleep with a sticky film of ice cream on his teeth, thinking about how he was stupid for not buying a toothbrush while he was at the grocery store, with Peter not having come out of the bathroom yet.

_“You kill yourself for recognition, kill yourself to never ever stop…”_

“Uh… yeah,” said Peter, his voice still sleep-thick, and dropped lightly back down onto the ground. “I’m not exactly a ball of fire when I wake up. If I had to put my costume on if I got woken up for an emergency, I never would have lived to go to your dimension, I can tell you that.” 

_“Don’t leave me high, don’t leave me dry,”_ warbled the phone as Peter picked it up to turn it off.

“Who’s the singer?” asked Miles.

Peter still had the mask on, but Miles could just feel the look he was getting. “You don’t know Radiohead? Wow. I should have spent less time teaching you how to be Spider-Man and more time teaching you about real music.”

“You hardly spent any time teaching me how to be Spider-Man.”

Miles meant it as a joke, but to his surprise, Peter winced and turned away. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“That’s not… we kinda had a lot going on, and…”

“Yeah.” Peter stretched. “Anyway. You drink coffee in the morning?”

They had breakfast together: cold cereal and the last of Peter’s milk. Afterwards Miles started washing up again.

“I can wash up while you shower,” Peter said. “Remember, you get morning showers.”

“This will only take a second.”

Awkward silence.

“Don’t wash my mug, I might have another cup of coffee while you’re in the shower.”

“Aight.”

Awkward silence.

“Well that’s all cleaned up,” Miles said, turning off the tap. “Uh… hmmm. I guess I’ll get back in my suit after I shower. Maybe we could patrol together?”

“Probably need to figure out if you have an identity first,” said Peter, putting another pod in the coffee maker. “And get you an identity if you don’t.”

“How? If I don’t, I mean.”

“Dunno. Probably head over to the Avengers tower and see if anybody there knows.”

“What’s Avengers?”

“God I wish that were me,” Peter said pensively.

———

When Mary-Jane Watson opened the door to the trailer she shared with a co-star and saw a man inside wearing a red leather costume with knives and guns strapped to him, you might have expected the actress to scream or run.

Instead she stood there on the step with the door opened and said with an air of injury, “You know, Spider-Man divorced me, so the whole hostage situation thing doesn’t have the same romantic thrill for me anymore.”

“No, no!” said the man. “I’m not here to hurt a hair on your head! I mean that would be a crime in itself, because those red curls are seriously _banging,_ lady. Not that I’m necessarily opposed to committing a crime, but I won’t be doing that one. Sort of already did a breaking and entering, trespassing kind of a dealio to get in your trailer, so I guess that proves I’m okay with the crime thing, right? I’m down with the street. ACAB!”

“Uh huh,” said MJ. “So why are you here, and should I know you? Sorry if I should—there are just _so many_ of you.”

“Well, shut the door, come in, take a seat, have a La Croix, chat with me. I’m Deadpool.”

“Ohhhh,” MJ said, closing the door. “I’ve heard of you. You’re the crazy one who can’t die? Spider-Man always complained that you made fun of him and that you were too crazy to insult back.”

Deadpool made kind of half-hearted finger guns in response. “Thaaaat is a little bit of a misunderstanding, but uh. I do want to talk about Peter.”

MJ cracked open a cherry-lime La Croix and took a sip without saying anything.

Deadpool was sitting across from her at the tiny table, and he put his elbows on the table and intercrossed his fingers in a position that was so serious that combined with his funhouse costume it just looked all the more absurd. “After his surgery, when he had his first heat, about six weeks ago. I helped him. And… I was hoping that it would lead to something more, for me and him.”

MJ let out a disbelieving laugh, not at all from amusement. “Are you asking for my blessing? I’m not Peter’s owner.”

“No. Totally backwards. See, I used that word ‘hope’, which if you knew me, you would already know means this is going someplace very very bad.”

“You sound like Peter.”

“I get that a lot.” Deadpool leaned forward over his clasped hands. “Peter apparently went to some other dimension and he came back with hope to this universe. Now, our universe, letting me _and_ Peter both have reasonably well-founded hope at the same time? Never gonna happen. So it if it has to be one person’s hope that gets burnt, it’s gonna be mine.”

“I’m confused.”

“Peter wants kids now.”

“I know, he told me when he asked me to take him back.” MJ frowned, thinking about Peter, going down on his knees in his funeral suit to beg. A few years ago, Peter saying he was ready for kids would have been all her worries laid to rest, her dream come true. But now… God. It had been utter hell. Peter using the words _trial separation_ in couples therapy that first time. And then _divorce_ and then _surgical bond reversal,_ and then seeing him in that same suit to sign the divorce papers and knowing that, if she ever saw him again, he wouldn’t be _hers_ anymore. Huddling under a blanket in the living room of the place that used to be _theirs,_ drinking straight from a bottle of ice wine, with a pound of dark chocolates on the coffee table, that awful day that the psychic link between them shattered when Peter had his gland taken out.

And now, now after she’s gone through all that, after she’s grieved their relationship and accepted it was over, now he wants another chance?

She went through _so fucking much_ because _he didn’t want to try anymore._ She wasn’t the one who brought all that shit up! What was she supposed to do when he asked to separate, refuse to let him go?

What was she supposed to do now? Should she really take him back, try again? Suppose they have kids and then she finds out he’s not really ready for them now, either, he just got desperate from being alone? How could she know? He hid his real feelings about kids from her for years. He hid _so much_ from her, over and over. Looking back, how easily he kept Spider-Man from her seemed like the reddest of flags instead of a romantic beginning.

“I think he always wanted them,” Deadpool said after this long silence of her brooding and saying nothing, and she snorted. “No, really—I mean, I’m not at all trying to say that I know him better than you, but you said yourself, me and Peter are a lot alike, Red. There are many some angles of him that I just… get, that are harder for somebody like you.”

“Somebody like me?”

“Yeah, you know… kind, sweet, well-liked, stable, _good…”_

“You don’t think Peter is any of those things?”

“Peter doesn’t, does he?”

Direct hit. Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t answer.

“Don’t blame you though. Hell, _I_ thought he really didn’t want kids too. But once he told me he did, I realized that was a goddamn stupid thing to think. Peter? Not want more family? How the fuck did I ever believe _that_ for a second.” He shook his head.

“No, I always knew he really did want them,” MJ said quietly. “He was just afraid. Half of being a bad parent, and half of letting Spider-Man die.”

“See? You are better for him than me, Red.” It’s said cheerfully. “I mean, in addition to all the other stuff. The sanity, the sex appeal, blah blah blah. You are a straight up catch. I mean, if I wasn’t here to plead my boy Peter’s case, I’d be trying to make a connection on my own behalf.”

MJ clicked her nails against the can. “You know I’m an alpha, right?”

“Red, even if I couldn’t tell it from the smell of you, you have got _superb_ Big Dick Energy.” Deadpool did a chef’s kiss. “God, I was jealous of you before I met you, now I know I’ve gotta be jealous of Peter too, for having had you. I don’t suppose you’ve ever considered leaking a sex tape?”

MJ laughed, with actual humour this time. “Thanks, I think, but no.”

The jaunty guitar of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” suddenly played tinnily from Deadpool’s side of the table.

“Hold on, I gotta check this.” Deadpool pulled out a phone in a Hello Kitty case and answered it. “Yeah? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Deadpool made a _blah blah blah_ gesture with his other hand at Mary-Jane. “Yeah. No. Yeah. Sure. No, no, no, no,” he laughed, wheezed, coughed, then said, “Sorry, that was funny. Yeah. Okay. Sure, I’ll have their heads in a box for you Monday. Yeah. Usual account. Yeah. No. Yeah. Okay. Bye!”

“I’m going to choose to believe that was metaphorical,” MJ said as Deadpool tucked the phone away.

“Don’t stop believin’,” Deadpool said, with a considerably livelier set of finger guns. “But anyway. Where were we. Here. In your trailer. Don’t know why I asked that. What were we doing. Talking about how you should dick Peter down and make ridiculously attractive babies. Right! Right. I’m back, baby. Hope it’s okay that I called you baby, Red.”

MJ took another drink of La Croix. “Did you want a drink, by the way?”

“Do you have coconut?” Deadpool said hopefully, peering through the clear door of the little mini fridge.

“Just the cherry lime, I think.”

“Beggars and choosers.” Deadpool pulled out a can and lifted up the bottom of his mask, and MJ bit the inside of her cheek to check a gasp at how mottled and pitted his skin was. If Deadpool noticed her surprise, he didn’t say anything. “Innocent!”

“Huh?”

“Says it right there on the can,” Deadpool said. “Isn’t that nice? This shit is innocent. With an exclamation point!” He chugged the rest of the can and sighed, then pulled his mask down. Then he belched. “Goddamnit. Belch _then_ the mask, I know, remind me earlier next time.”

MJ took the empty can to drop it into the little bin for empty beverage containers. “So… you really just came here to tell me to take Peter back?”

“Yeah… yeah, that’s why I came here… so I guess now I leave.” Deadpool drummed his fingers on the table. “Thank you for the La Croix. Also, Peter is thirty-eight so like. Keep that in mind. I know you’ve been hurt by him. But if he doesn’t get kids from you and soon, he may never get them. So. Just to keep in mind. Wanted to put in my two cents. Rounded it up to a nickel because we don’t have pennies in Canada.”

“You’re from Canada?”

“Regina, Saskatchewan. Have you ever been there? Or seen _Little House on the Prairie?_ God’s country, and therefore, absolutely terrible. Well. I know when I’ve outstayed my welcome, and just for a change of pace I’m actually going to react to knowing that by leaving.” Deadpool stood up. “Also you should probably let your co-star out of the closet.”

“I beg your pardon?!”

“Pardon granted,” said Deadpool, saluted, and went in no particular hurry out the trailer door, singing off-key, “I’m never gonna stop the rain by complaining… because I’m freeeee...”

The door closed with a soft click.

MJ stared at the closed door a moment before getting up and opening the little closet door. There was her co-star, tied-up, blindfolded, gagged, and with headphones on, which she later found out were apparently playing some kind of “white noise with guided meditation” track.

———

“It’s not that I’m not thankful not to have student debt any more,” Miles said as they left the Avengers tower together, “but an inheritance from my dead parents is weird. Like _really_ weird. Were they ever real?! Are there people who knew my dead parents—” Miles opened the folder in his hands for a moment—“John and Mary Morales, God. Couldn’t he at least be bothered to go for Juan and Maria? I mean that is just lazy—wait, hold on.”

Peter held on, stopping on the sidewalk with him.

“It isn’t just money for school,” Miles said slowly, turning through the documents that FRIDAY had collected for him, “I inherited a _home.”_

“Well I’ll be damned,” said Peter. “Maybe I should get you to let me live with you instead.”

He said it without thinking, but Miles’s eyes lit up. “You think? I mean it’s gotta be better than where you live now, right?”

Peter laughed. “Thanks a lot.”

“How do I… wow. This is crazy. This is a deed… hey, something else weird. Why did Molecule Man send these documents to them? How’d he know I’d figure out to go there to get them?”

“He may have thought it’d go the other way. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t brought you there today that they were planning to go look for you. It’s a little weird for a package to suddenly show up full of an unknown person’s sensitive legal documents, even for the Avengers.”

“Guess so… Hey, wait a minute, this is a driver’s license. I thought it was just a state ID but it’s not.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t know how to drive, man!”

“You never took driver’s ed?”

“Yeah but that was more than five years ago! Why would I need a car? If I need to get somewhere fast I just swing.” Miles flipped back. “But wow. A _home!_ Hey, there’s no keys, though.”

“With the deed in your name and your ID, you can get the locks changed. Probably wanna do that anyway. Where is your new place?”

“Looks like Bushwick.”

———

When they went to check it out, they found a narrow, three-story townhome with a keyless biometric lock, and when Miles touched it experimentally with his right index finger, it unlocked.

“Okay, this is feeling a little creepy,” Miles admitted when he walked in cautiously after groping around for a light switch. “I feel a bit like I’m checking into Hotel California.”

“So you do know some real music,” Peter said, closing the door behind him.

They walked around. The place was broom clean and undecorated with plain white walls everywhere but did have some basic furniture in some of the rooms: a table, but no chairs, in a dining/living area; a queen-sized bed each complete with sheets, blankets, and pillows in two different bedrooms; a desk and computer chair in another room.

They wandered back down mostly in silence and Miles opened the fridge, which was empty except for a box of baking soda, while Peter peered into some empty cabinets.

“Miles Morales, homeowner,” said Peter.

“What do you think the taxes and stuff will be on this place? I gotta get a job, man… hey, but I’m serious, this place is way too big for me. What’s your lease like? You should live with me! And—” Miles’s voice suddenly got insecure, and he closed the fridge. “I won’t be weird, or creepy, or, like… it would be just as roommates.”

“Miles. Seriously. I don’t blame you for what happened, at all.” Peter tried to smile and keep it light. “C’mon, you’re a guy in your early twenties. You can’t tell me this is the first time you had a hook up that went awkward.”

Miles turned the tap in the sink on and they both stared at the running water for a second in silence.

_Ohhhh… oh hell._

“But my lease has got like eight, nine months on it or something, I don’t know exactly,” Peter rushed on.

———

Or so Peter thought.

But when he actually checked his voicemails, he found that his current landlord, in a very polite and professional way, wanted him to get the hell out. Apparently the collider incident—during which, both coming and going, the glitching had hit the apartments above and below him—and the tendency for people in costume to enter and leave the apartment via the window rather than the doors, put together, had caused the landlords some headaches, because the other tenants were complaining and yet they didn’t have anything in the lease to say “no transdimensional incidents,” nor did they particularly like the optics of evicting Spider-Man. However, if Spider-Man would like to find someplace else to live, they would gladly let him out of the lease with no penalty and pay moving costs.

Scenting blood, Peter called them back and negotiated a more substantial cash for keys agreement including a guarantee of getting his damage deposit in full.

So when he got a call from MJ, he was BESTÅ deep in IKEA.

“Hey,” he said, juggling some stuff into the shopping cart, “what’s up?”

“Hi Peter,” she said. “Is now a good time to talk?”

“Sure! Just doing some shopping. Plenty of time.”

“Oh, good. Well.”

There was a long pause, during which Miles came up to him and said, “Hey, Peter, check this out, you grate the cheese here and it catches it—oh, you’re on the phone?”

Peter mouthed _it’s MJ!_ at Miles, who looked surprised, then gave him a tentative thumbs up of encouragement.

“Are you with someone?” said MJ.

“Oh… yeah, actually, kind of a funny story… kind of a weird story… You remember that, uh, that place I… went to?”

“The other dimension?”

“Yeah! So, this guy from there, the one who, uh, who does the same job as me, over there… long story short, he’s here now. And uh… we’re going to be roommates at his place in Bushwick, so… IKEA shopping it is.”

“The new IKEA in Queens?”

“Haha, yeah! Not far from our… your place,” Peter finished lamely and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.

“How are you planning to get the stuff over to Bushwick? Get it delivered?”

“Yeah, neither of us has a car, but it’s not too bad. We do have beds, so we can wait for… everything else.”

MJ had gotten the SUV in the divorce, which Peter’s lawyer had been incredulous about—“You’re letting her have the house _and_ the car?! Do you understand what is meant by ‘equitable division of assets’ at all?!”—but Peter almost never used the car, so it would have been petty to ask for it.

“Well I don’t have anything on today, so… I was thinking about inviting you for dinner, but maybe instead I could bring the car over and at least help you boys get some stuff over. Maybe we can get some meatballs for an easy dinner, huh? Be nice to meet your new roommate.”

“Yeah hold on a second.” Peter pressed the phone to his chest and hissed at Miles, “She wants to come help us move our shit with the SUV and then have dinner with us?! Do I go for it?!”

“Go for it!” whispered Miles, his pose taking on more enthusiasm, and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder and continued in the same whisper, “Or I could go?”

“No, she wants to meet you.”

“You still have your own room.” Miles grinned with his fingers pointing at Peter.

Peter flushed and flushed deeper when Miles laughed at him for it, then pulled his phone back up with a jerk. “Yeah! That sounds—MJ? You still there?”

“Yeah.”

“That sounds great! Works for us! Where you want to meet?”

“I’ll text when I get there. Maybe twenty-five minutes? Just make sure you get the pans and stuff to make the dinner. See ya soon, Tiger.”

“See you soon,” Peter said, and hung up, feeling as dizzy and blessed as he had the first time he hung up from arranging a date with MJ.

———

When MJ met them, they loaded up her SUV with a set of flat packed chairs, clothes hangers for their closets, lighting fixtures, garbage bins, a TV stand, a dresser for Miles, a bunch of kitchen stuff, frozen meatballs, mashed potatoes, gravy mix, and other odds and ends; even a houseplant—“can’t have a Spider-House without a spider plant,” said Peter. A few other things that wouldn’t fit even in an SUV they arranged for delivery.

“Let’s fold the back passenger seats to make more room,” Miles proposed as they started putting things in. “I’ll just swing over to a supermarket and meet you back there. We need dish soap at least, anyway, or we won’t be able to use this stuff to make dinner.”

MJ pretended she didn’t notice Miles make an encouraging gesture at Peter before they split up and she got back in the car with her ex-husband in the passenger side.

“I’d never have guessed he’s from another dimension,” she said as she buckled in.

Peter laughed. “Yeah, his dimension is really close to ours, actually… some of the other ones were bizarre.”

She turned on the car. “Like how bizarre?”

“Hard to pick… the guy who was literally in black and white? The girl whose eyes took up half her head? Or the talking pig?”

“The talking pig? Like Porky Pig?”

Peter swiped his hand over his face in the corner of her vision, his familiar gesture of frustration. “Yeah, he even said ‘That’s all folks.’”

“I think that one wins, Tiger.”

There was silence for a bit as she navigated out of the parking garage and pulled into Brooklyn traffic.

“So…” Peter had his hands on his knees like a desperate man waiting to be called in for a job interview. “It was nice of you to want to invite me to dinner. Maybe we could go out together later this week? If you have time.”

“You remember that all-night Greek diner you used to go to all the time, the one that had the burgers you loved, over by—”

“Yes!” Peter practically shouted, making her flinch. “Wow. Sorry. No but that’s crazy. Yeah I know the one you mean. Go on.”

“Right so… the son of the owner opened a diner out near Hempstead, I just happened to go in there for a cup of coffee when we were location shooting. I don’t know if his burgers will be as good, but I thought you might wanna try it.”

“Why _did_ that place close, anyway?”

MJ can’t help a grin. “Uh, maybe because the place was super gross? Don’t tell me Spider-Man never saw the big C grade in the window. I just assumed that your Spider-Guts could handle the food poisoning so you didn’t have to worry.”

Peter stared at her. “Is that why you always told me not to bring home take-out from there?”

She laughed. “Yep.”

———

“Miles you gotta do it at a right angle… no a _right_ angle…”

“This is a right angle!”

“A right angle is 90 degrees, that is 75 degrees, 80 at _best.”_

“Peter, maybe you need your eyes checked, because this is a right angle.”

“Okay, then that one is going to be _your_ chair, and when you’re spending every meal looking like the Leaning Tower of Pisa I am going to say—”

“Fine, fine, fine, is this better?”

In the kitchen, MJ grinned as she made the food. Since it was mostly a matter of washing new kitchen items and heating up frozen stuff, she was able to eavesdrop on the assembly process of the chairs, lamp, and other living/dining room items.

Despite a certain amount of bickering, the two clearly clicked. Peter had gotten so isolated over the years… It was part of what made their relationship so high pressure and made its disintegration even more painful for her. She was all he had and she _knew_ she was all he had but it was so exhausting to be _everything_ to a person, especially when that person could never be relied on to be there in return, because Spider-Man business struck all the time…

“Dinner’s almost ready,” she called through the alcove, “will there be chairs to sit on?”

“Yeah,” Peter called back, “or ja, or whatever they say in Sweden.”

They ate meatballs and drank that funky elderberry juice and talked about the alternate universe’s version of the Greek diner and the outrageous prices of things in Miles’s original universe.

“Do you remember when we got to Penn Station and we hit that shop to buy snacks and you kept being like, ‘Is this obscene? These prices are obscene, right? Like more than even usual for this universe? Who’s paying ten thousand dollars for a can of knock off Red Bull?!’ and I was like ‘what’s Red Bull?’”

“Yeah it was two weeks ago buddy,” Peter said, spearing a meatball on his fork and dragging it through the lingonberry jam and the mashed potatoes before popping it into his mouth.

“I don’t know why that stuck out but I think it was that you were being so _loud,_ and we were kind of on the run from Alchemax but Gwen was like, ‘He just looks like a crazy hobo, don’t worry, people are actively ignoring us right now.’”

Peter gave Miles as much of a face as one could make swallowing a meatball. “Of course I looked like a crazy hobo. Do you know how many times I was able to wash the suit between being spiked like a football into Times Square and meeting you in that graveyard? _Once.”_

“How long were you in that other dimension?” MJ cut in as Miles wrinkled his nose.

“Few weeks,” said Peter.

MJ glanced back and forth between Peter and Miles. “You only spent a few weeks together?”

“Me and him?” Peter paused with his fork in front of his mouth, and sauce dripped off his meatball onto his plate. “No, between me meeting Miles and coming back was two… two days?”

“Technically three days, I think,” Miles mused. “‘Cause we met on Wednesday night, and then Thursday we went to the Hudson Valley, and Friday night I destroyed the Collider, yeah?”

“Three days,” repeated MJ. “And Miles, you arrived this universe… yesterday?”

Miles nodded.

“You’ve known each other less than a week, and for most of that time Miles was thirteen?”

“Fourteen,” said Miles, “I have a September birthday.”

“Oh really? When in September? Mine’s October 14,” said Peter. “Maybe we’re both Libras.”

“September 11, I’m a Virgo,” said Miles.

MJ stared. “You don’t care about the zodiac.”

“No but if he was, we would have been ⅔ of an A Perfect Circle song,” pointed out Peter.

“What’s A Perfect Circle? Is it a band?”

Peter rolled his eyes. “I am going to have to teach you _so_ much.”

MJ rubbed her temple. Should she point out the obvious? But the obvious wasn’t so obvious, somehow. They _weren’t_ acting like they’d known each other less than a week… they were acting like they’d known each other forever…

“Sure, we can teach other lots, like I could teach you how to wipe gravy off your chin.”

“Hey. Facial hair has gravy attraction factors, the force rises along a non-Euclidean curve. If you studied science you’d know that, art major.”

Now Miles rolled his eyes and leaned over with a napkin. “C’mon, take it, don’t be gross.”

“Hmph,” grumbled Peter, but he took the napkin, and MJ watched Miles watch Peter clean his face.

_Oh. Oh, it’s like that, huh?_

“Peter,” MJ said, “I meant to say before. This morning, when we were filming, a man calling himself Deadpool broke into my trailer—”

The napkin landed in Peter’s mashed potato remnants. “Deadpool? What did he do?”

“To me, nothing, he just wanted to talk, and I didn’t mind that per se,” MJ said, “but like I said, he broke into my trailer and also tied up my coworker and put her in the closet, and it’s really the latter part that I would like him not to do again, but I don’t know how to get in touch—”

Peter stood up. “Hold on, I’ll call him right now.”

If she hadn’t brought the subject up for the purpose of getting Peter out of the room, MJ would have told Peter that he didn’t _have_ to leap to the rescue right away, but in the moment she was glad that she could predict Peter’s sense of timing.

———

“I know it’s only been a few days, but are you in love with Peter?”

Miles nearly choked on his mashed potatoes, which was extremely embarrassing with the amount of potato particles that flew everywhere. Even more embarrassing was that MJ came around the table and thumped his back until he was able to say, “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

“Good, sorry about that,” MJ said, getting back into her own chair. “I didn’t spring it on you like that to shock you, I just wanted to get this conversation done before Peter comes back.”

“He might still be able to hear—super senses, you know.”

“I know, but it’s the best chance I have. My point is… you and Peter really made a connection, huh?”

 _How many levels of embarrassed am I on right now?_ “Um…” Miles looked at Peter’s pretty and elegant ex-wife and then down at the spray of potato detritus. “Can’t really deny connection… or attraction... in love is… I mean… he’s in love with _you,_ so…” He looked back up and said seriously, meeting her eyes. “I mean, I want him to be happy, right.”

“But if I was out of the picture, you’d want to make it something serious, is my intuition right? I’m talking serious-serious. Like having kids with him. Am I wrong?”

 _Lie, hedge, or dodge?_ Miles went for dodge and counter-attack. “You’re definitely in the picture, though. You’re still in love with him, I think. Am _I_ wrong?”

MJ pursed her lips a moment, not in a sour way, in a thoughtful way. “The problem is that love wasn’t enough for us.”

“I think if you tried again, you could make it work.”

“What’s that saying about the definition of insanity,” MJ said pointedly. “I would need this time to be different, and I don’t know if it would be. But if Peter were with a different person…” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes this time. “I want him to be happy, too. But I’m still me, I’m definitely not different. I know Peter says he’s changed, but—”

The doorbell rang, and they both turned.

Miles got up, relieved at the break, and went to see who was at the door.

When he was still peering through the peephole at a man in a red costume, Peter came down the stairs, and Miles looked back over his shoulder as Peter said into a phone, “Wade, I swear to God, if that’s you—”

“But you said you’re making IKEA furniture!” Deadpool yelled from outside. “You _know_ how I feel about IKEA furniture, baby boy!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm planning to do NaNoWriMo so I'm sorry to say this will probably be the last update for this fic until December! Oh God December doesn't feel like a real month. If December happens, this fic will get an update. If December doesn't happen.... just know everybody ends up happy, okay?


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